Sir Francis Walsingham, as we have said, had the honour to be Sir Philip
Sidney’s father-in-law; he was a gentleman at first, of a good house, and
of a better education, and from the University travelled for the rest of
his learning. Doubtless he was the only linguist of his times, how to
use his own tongue, whereby he came to be employed in the chiefest
affairs of State.
He was sent Ambassador to France, and stayed there _Legar_ long in the
heat of the civil wars, and at the same time that Monsieur was here a
suitor to the Queen; and, if I be not mistaken, he played the very same
part there as since Gondomar did here. {140a} At his return he was taken
principal Secretary, and for one of the great engines of State, and of
the times, high in his mistress’s (the Queen’s) favour, and a watchful
servant over the safety of his mistress.
They note him to have certain courtesies and secret ways of intelligence
above the rest; but I must confess I am to seek wherefore he suffered
Parry {140b} to play so long as he did, hang on the hook, before he
hoisted him up; and I have been a little curious in the search thereof,
though I have not to do with the _Arcana Regalia Imperii_, for to know it
is sometimes a burden; and I remember it was Ovid’s criminant error that
he saw too much, but I hope these are collaterals, and of no danger.
But that Parry, having an intent to kill the Queen, made the way of his
access by betraying of others, and in impeaching of the priests of his
own correspondency, and thereby had access to confer with the Queen, as
oftentimes private and familiar discourse with Walsingham, will not be
the query of the mystery, for the Secretary might have had an end of a
further discovery and maturity of the treason; but that, after the Queen
knew Parry’s intent, why she would then admit him to private discourse,
and Walsingham to suffer him, considering the conditions of all the
designs, and to permit him to go where and whither he listed, and only
under the secrecy of a dark sentinel set over him, was a piece of reach
and hazard beyond my apprehension. I must again profess that I have read
many of his letters, for they are commonly sent to my Lord of Leicester
and of Burleigh out of France, containing many fine passages and secrets,
yet, if I might have been beholding to his cyphers, they would have told
pretty tales of the times; but I must now close him up, and rank him
amongst the _Togati_, yet chief of those that laid the foundations of the
French and Dutch wars, which was another piece of his fineness of the
times, with one observation more, that he was one of the greatest always
of the Austrian embracements, for both himself and Stafford that preceded
him might well have been compared to him in the Gospel that sowed his
tares in the night; so did they their seeds in division in the dark; and
as it is a likely report that they father on him at his return, the Queen
speaking to him with some sensibility of the Spanish designs on France:
“Madam,” he answered, “I beseech you be content, and fear not; the
Spaniard hath a great appetite and an excellent digestion, but I have
fitted him with a bone for these twenty years that your Majesty should
have no cause to doubt him, provided that, if the fire chance to slake
which I have kindled, you will be ruled by me, and cast in some of your
fuel, which will revive the flame.”